


Memory

by osprey_archer



Series: Reciprocity [24]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Grief/Mourning, M/M, Mindwiping
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-22
Updated: 2015-06-22
Packaged: 2018-04-05 16:05:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,259
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4186131
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/osprey_archer/pseuds/osprey_archer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve and company cope with the aftermath of SHIELD's mind-wiping activities, and Bucky tells Steve about his first Soviet team.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Memory

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to [littlerhymes> for betaing this!](http://archiveofourown.org/users/littlerhymes/pseuds/littlerhymes)

“You’re lying!” Rumlow yelled again. 

Steve and Natasha glanced at each other. They stood outside Rumlow’s room – he had ordered them to leave almost as soon as they walked in. “Like I want to talk to a couple of kidnappers!” he had said. But they stayed, to make sure Bobbi told him the truth, and also that he didn’t attack her. 

Bobbi had broken the truth to him. But Rumlow refused to believe it, and for more than an hour Bobbi and Rumlow had gone around in circles about it, Rumlow refusing to believe, arguing, and his dog Lucy whining softly, her distress a counterpoint to his anger. 

Steve ought to be sympathetic, he knew; was trying to be sympathetic. But at this point he just wanted to shake Rumlow till his teeth rattled, _make_ him understand; and that feeling made Steve feel sick with shame. 

Through the empty room across the hall, he could see out the window, a nice view of the lights of Manhattan. Stark Tower didn’t have any facilities for long-term incarceration (Steve felt a odd sense of relief at hearing that), so Rumlow’s room was on an empty hall that must have been designed for offices. 

Smallish offices. But at least they all had windows.

Bobbi drew in a deep, exasperated breath. Her cool was finally beginning to slip. “Jack,” she began.

“See! You’re calling me Jack again!”

“Because I’m used to calling you that – ”

“Because it’s my real name – ”

“No, because it’s your _code name_ , which _you chose_ before you went through the procedure, and I’m your handler and I’ve been _lying to you_ the whole time I’ve known you until tonight! I don’t know how to put this more clearly! Should I play some recordings from our phone conversations? I recorded them all for the doctors! Will that make you believe me?”

Silence. Steve glanced over at Natasha. She stared at the far wall, and Steve wondered if this conversation hit close to home. If any of her handlers ever spoke to her like this. If breaking the truth to Rumlow so bluntly had really been the best idea.

But the only alternative was to keep lying. 

Rumlow spoke. “Get out.”

“Okay,” said Bobbi. She sounded exhausted. “You need some time to think things over.”

“I need you to get _out_!” His voice rose on the last word, becoming so gravelly that it was scarcely understandable. A crumpled plastic cup, probably the only thing within tossing distance, flew out of the room.

Lucy followed the cup, ears and tail low. She took it gently in her mouth and carried it back into the room, her plumy tail rising to wag hopefully, brushing Bobbi’s leg as Bobbi slipped out the door. Bobbi closed the door gently and sagged against it, as if she needed it to hold her up. 

Lucy barked hopefully, like she had when she delivered Rumlow’s slippers.

That was when Rumlow began to cry. 

Bobbi froze, her white face whitening further. “Go,” Natasha said, straightening. When Bobbi didn’t move, Natasha put a hand between her shoulder blades and began to push her down the hall. Bobbi walked. Steve followed. His left foot was all pins and needles. 

Tony’s retainer Happy stood halfway down the hall. Natasha paused in front of him, and the moment she stopped pushing, Bobbi stopped too, like she couldn’t move under her own locomotion. “You’ll make sure he doesn’t hurt himself?” Natasha said. 

“Yes ma’am,” Happy said. “JARVIS and I will keep watch.” 

As soon as they got back on the elevator, Natasha said, “One down. Two to go.” 

Bobbi nodded. She had her head forward, her long blonde hair falling in her face. Steve recognized the gesture from Bucky, and it gave him a twinge of unpleasant sympathy for her, for all that she had brought that hellish conversation with Rumlow down on her own head. 

He did think she had liked Rumlow. 

“I’ll get your go bag off the Bus,’ Natasha said. 

Bobbi lifted her head. Her pallor was ghastly. “You want to go _now_?” 

“When else?” Natasha asked. “You can tell me everything you know about the T.A.H.I.T.I. program while we drive.”

Steve thought he understood Natasha’s urgency: she didn’t want to be left alone with her thoughts. Better a distraction, any distraction, and a mission was at least a useful one.

But pushing Bobbi to the point of collapse would be counterproductive, and Bobbi looked about to keel over. “Natasha,” Steve began. 

But before he could get any farther, JARVIS interrupted; and Steve wondered if he were imagining the delicacy in JARVIS’s tone, as if JARVIS knew he was interrupting. “Agent Romanov, Captain Rogers,” JARVIS said. “Mr. Stark requests your presence in the breakfast room.” 

Steve and Natasha looked at each other. “Well,” said Natasha. She flashed a slightly feral smile at Bobbi. “You get a reprieve. For now.” 

***

The breakfast spread in Tony’s penthouse was amazing, of course, notwithstanding that it was three o’clock in the morning. Steve wondered if he kept a chef on twenty-four hour call. A platter of assorted doughnuts glistening with glaze, chafing dishes of scrambled eggs and sausages and bacon, a three-tiered tray of muffins – blueberry, lemon-poppy seed, chocolate, cranberry orange. 

Bucky stood next to the muffin display. Steve was surprised, and then pleased, and then ashamed of his own surprise, to see that Bucky had been invited; and he took the blueberry muffin that Bucky handed to him. It smelled of sweet fruit and faintly of cinnamon, and it steamed gently when he broke it open. Even as tired as Steve was, it smelled good. 

Tony stood by the espresso machine, steaming milk for a latte and discussing the T.A.H.I.T.I. facilities loudly enough to be heard above the hiss of the steam and the growl of the grinding espresso beans. “They cut the tops of their heads off and stuck their brains full of needles,” he said, and Steve abruptly lost his appetite for his muffin. “The guy looked like a porcupine when Rhodey and I walked in.”

“You found them with a patient _on the operating table_?” Pepper was horrified. 

Tony poured the steaming milk into a mug. He handed it to her, and she held it in both hands, not drinking. “Eugene Ivavov. He’s the one who ‘relapsed’ – Coulson’s word – so they were wiping him all over again. Didn’t get very far before Rhodey and I cut it short, though.”

Steve glanced over at Bucky. He appeared to be considering the doughnut selection with riveted attention. Natasha nibbled at a slice of bacon. Steve sat down at the round breakfast table, next to Bruce, who had a glass pot of tea with some sort of flower suspended in the water. It looked oddly beautiful, like a sea anemone, and Steve caught himself staring at it fixedly. His eyes felt scratchy with tiredness. 

“We found a couple of Coulson’s other voodoo dolls at the facility, too,” Tony continued. “The latest model, just wiped a couple days ago and still confused as hell. And a corpse. Cameron White. A couple of months ago, White tried to rob a convenience store, killed the clerk, and then got killed in a shootout with the police. They’ve been keeping him on ice ever since to try to figure out what went wrong.”

“The stick-up didn’t give Coulson any pause about the program?” Steve asked, incredulous. 

Tony turned around. He had a manically caffeinated look, eyes big and staring and hair rumpled up. He pointed finger guns at Steve. “That is _exactly_ what I asked Coulson after I got back,” he said. “‘You didn’t think, Maybe we shouldn’t release ticking time bombs on the unsuspecting public? One of the participants in the original T.A.H.I.T.I. program also went on a killing spree!’ And you know what Coulson said? ‘It was the alien DNA injections in the original project that drove Sebastian Derik insane.’ Deflecting bastard.” He shook his head. “Want a latte?” 

Steve was about to refuse, but Bucky asked, “Can you do cappuccinos?” He sounded a little shy, and Steve realized that this was the first time Bucky and Tony had really spoken to each other. 

Tony, bless him, was in an expansive and giving mood. “Abso-fucking-lutely,” he said. He pulled on the steam wand control to loose a great cloud of steam – Steve suspected this was for show, not an integral part of the cappuccino-making process – and, shrouded in steam like a wizard, steamed up a foamy cloud of milk for a cappuccino. 

“It might not be the wipe that drove White to armed robbery,” Natasha said. She stared down at her mocha. She looked utterly exhausted, far more than one night without sleep would account for. _Scapegoat_ had already stretched her near the breaking point. She brushed her hair behind her ear. “These were all Hydra agents Coulson let out. Hydra wasn’t recruiting them for their good moral character.” 

“We’ll have to bring the rest of them in,” Tony said. He let out some more steam and started another drink. 

Steve felt a wave of absolute exhaustion at the words, imagining more scenes like the one with Rumlow. And it seemed unfair, in a way, to imprison them again after all they had already suffered. Mind wipes, and years in prison without trial before that…

Tony handed Natasha a mocha. Natasha took a sip. “Bobbi’s already agreed to take me to the other two members of her caseload,” she said. 

“Has she? Great. That means we’ll be up to six of the twelve. How about that latte, Steve?” 

Steve could probably use the caffeine, anyway. And a chance to show off always cheered Tony up. “I’d like a cappuccino too,” Steve said. 

Once everyone was properly caffeinated, they all sat down around the breakfast table. Bruce gathered up his papers, which had spread out over half the table, and they all settled down and breathed in the steam from their drinks. The darkness seemed to press in at the penthouse windows, and even the lights of New York City, usually so bright, seemed ineffectual against that vast darkness. 

Bucky broke the silence. “Once we’ve brought them in. What’ll happen to them?” 

Tony and Pepper gave each other one of those indecipherable couples looks. “Rhodey might arrange for military custody,” Tony said.

“They’d be more comfortable here,” Pepper said, and Steve had the impression that they had been discussing this already. “There’s enough space on the wing where we put Rumlow. After they’ve been through so much – it’s the least we can do.”

“I don’t want a bunch of murderous permanent house guests,” Tony said testily. 

Steve roused himself. “They won’t be permanent. We’ll have to arrange for them to stand trial for the crimes Coulson locked them up for. Let’s hope we can find some evidence this long after the fact.”

He was a little afraid that someone might object: trials for notorious Hydra agents? Madness! 

But everyone was nodding, so he went on. “We’re going to have to arrange trials for everyone currently in SHIELD captivity.” 

“Not everyone.” Bruce spoke for the first time, glancing up briefly from his papers. “Not ones who were locked up just for having powers. Unless there’s compelling evidence that they’re a danger to themselves or others, they ought to be set free.” 

“They lock people up just for…?” Bucky’s voice was soft.

“They used to,” Bruce said. “I don’t think they have the manpower anymore, but I doubt they’ve released the ones Hydra didn’t free.” 

“Not to rain on this festival of jail-breaking, but we have compelling evidence that they’re a danger. They’re going to want revenge for being locked up for years,” Tony said. 

“You don’t think they deserve the chance to take it?” Steve asked wryly. 

“I don’t feel like being slow-roasted in my suit,” Tony said, “or struck by lightning, or frozen to death, or God knows what else they might be able to do.” 

“They’re not going to do any of that.” Bucky’s voice was flat. Everyone looked at him, because he had been silent till then. “People who have been unjustly imprisoned don’t take revenge. They slink home and swear allegiance to the regime that hurt them and try not to draw attention to themselves. _Maybe_ they write an exposé.” 

A little silence followed. Bucky was dissecting a chocolate chip muffin. The half-molten chips left chocolate smudges on his fingertips. Natasha said, “Anyone with really dangerous powers, Hydra broke out already, Tony.”

Tony rubbed his face. “The rooms don’t have bathrooms,” he objected half-heartedly. 

“They can use the ones in the hall,” Pepper said. “We’ll set it up so they can move around in that area. Keep each other company.” 

“Conspire together,” Tony murmured. 

“With JARVIS listening?” Natasha said. 

“Point.” 

“We’ll make it comfortable,” Pepper said. “JARVIS can pipe music in if they want it. We can arrange for television sets. Books from the library.” Pepper thought about it. “Yard time on the roof.”

“What if they jump off?” Tony said. 

“You’re an engineering genius, Tony, I’m sure you can think of a way to prevent that.”

Tony couldn’t quite hide his smile. 

Another silence followed. Natasha swirled the liquid around in her mug, distributing the chocolate. 

“So they won’t be going back in solitary?” Bucky said.

“No. God no. At least not here. I don’t know what a jury would sentence them to. Were there any civil trials of Hydra agents after the fall of the Triskelion?” 

“Being a Hydra agent is not, in itself, illegal, as many jurisdictions fail to recognize that Hydra exists,” JARVIS supplied. “But after the fall of the Triskelion and their assault on other government properties, many Hydra agents were tried for murder, assault, grand larceny, kidnapping, trespassing, extortion, and high treason against the crown. The sentences were not unduly severe.”

“High treason against the…?”

“A small coalition of British Hydra agents attempted to assassinate Queen Elizabeth II, ma’am. It was not as highly publicized as the attempt of a rival Hydra faction to kidnap Prince George.” 

“We are never having children,” Pepper said grimly. 

More silence. Everyone looked exhausted: even Tony, jittery though he was. Even Bucky was too tired to finish his doughnut. The blueprints fluttered as Bruce flipped a page. Steve caught sight of a contraption bristling with needles, and looked away. 

“Is the meeting adjourned?” Steve asked. 

Pepper shook her head. “We have to decide what to do with Coulson and Skye.” 

“We’re keeping them here,” said Tony.

“You want to lock more people up without trial?” 

“I’m not talking about people, Steve. I’m talking about Coulson and Skye. He’s the director of SHIELD, and we already know he doesn’t care about laws, and she’s a hacker. They’re both too dangerous to – ”

“Yes, they’re both very dangerous, but where does that argument _stop_ , Tony?” Steve said. “There’s always a good reason why this one is special and dangerous and doesn’t deserve due process. This how we got in this position again in the first place. Coulson wouldn’t have had all those prisoners to mind-wipe if we hadn’t let him. We had a chance to stop all this three years ago, and we didn’t take it. This time we need to make good.” 

A little silence followed. Then Pepper said, “There’s also a security issue. We’ve already had a number of protests from regional SHIELD branches about their frozen bank accounts. When they find out that we’re keeping their director locked up…”

“What do you want me to do?” Tony asked. “Book Coulson a room at the Hyatt?” 

“Maria’s offered them a place to stay,” Pepper said. “She’s resigned from Stark Industries.” She looked at Tony. “She says she can’t approve of our decision to freeze SHIELD’s accounts.”

Tony frowned. “Did you tell Hill about the mind-wiping?” he asked Pepper. 

“We were standing over Cameron White’s corpse when we had this conversation.” 

Even Tony was momentarily speechless. Steve felt strangely shocked. He and Natasha and Sam would all have been dead without Hill; and he had thought that she agreed about dismantling SHIELD. 

But three years had passed. She might have changed her mind. 

Or maybe she had only agreed about the advisability of pretending to humor Captain America in his mad schemes. 

“Maria _will_ rally a rescue team to get Coulson if we keep him,” Pepper said. “We would have to lock her up too.”

“The prisoners are already multiplying,” Steve murmured. He had the unpleasant sensation of being in a bad dream. 

“We have to release them,” Pepper said. Her voice was soft, but authoritative. “First thing in the morning, Tony.”

Tony’s head drooped. He nodded. 

Pepper stood. “I think we should all take a break and get some sleep. Once we’re rested, we can have another discussion about Coulson’s mind-wiped…” She paused, as if searching for a word.

“Voodoo dolls,” Tony supplied.

“Don’t be disrespectful, Tony.” 

“Pincushions?”

“ _Tony_ ,” Pepper said, annoyed, half-laughing. 

“Porcupines?”

“You should get a nap,” Pepper said. 

“I don’t need a nap.”

“You haven’t slept for thirty-six hours.”

“I’ve gone longer without sleep.”

“Tony. _Bed_.” 

The meeting broke up after that. Bucky slipped away, and Steve would have gone after him, but Natasha distracted him. She was putting her coat back on. “How soon will you have a room on Rumlow’s wing ready?” she asked Pepper. “Bobbi and I could have the next member of her caseload here by breakfast.” 

“Natasha,” Steve said. “Shouldn’t you get some sleep first?” 

Natasha looked at him, shadows deep under her eyes. She looked exhausted, and a little crazy with it. “I don’t need sleep.”

“I can’t have any rooms ready before tomorrow evening,” Pepper added. “At the _earliest_. Get some sleep.” 

“But – ”

“Natasha,” said Pepper. She put her hands on Natasha’s shoulders and bent down to kiss her forehead, and very gently pushed her to sit again. Natasha sat poised on the edge of the chair, looking up at Pepper, face stormy. Pepper kept her hands on Natasha’s shoulders. “I’m going to make you some chamomile tea.”

Natasha seemed to sag back in the chair. She lowered her head, lifted her hand to her forehead. “All right,” she said, and glanced at Steve. “You want some too?” 

He hesitated, just a moment. “We have three kinds of honey,” Pepper said. 

And suddenly letting someone else take care of him, just for a little while, seemed irresistible. “All right,” he said, and sat. 

***

The tea soothed him while he drank it. But when he left Pepper and Natasha, about an hour later, his jittery, jangly exhaustion came back. He remembered this feeling from the early days after he defrosted: the sense that if he stayed by himself too long, if he even just sat still for too long, his feelings would crush him and he would never be able to get back up. 

He wouldn’t be able to sleep if he tried. 

He hoped to find Bucky in Natasha’s apartment. But he found only Simmons and Fitz and Mack in the kitchen, sifting through stacks of papers. “We printed them all out,” Simmons said. “In case Skye deletes them.”

“Deletes what?” Steve said.

“Her emails.” She flipped desolately through a few more pages, then seemed to realize he didn’t know what she was talking about. “Bucky just remembered she had a second email address.” She let the papers flutter back down. “She was corresponding with some of the T.A.H.I.T.I. victims.”

Steve suspected that Bucky had intended to keep the address to himself if he didn’t approve of the proposed imprisonment conditions. He picked one of the papers up. _From daisychain88 –_ , he read, and set it down, unable to read further. Jesus. Skye didn’t just know about the program; she was in it neck-deep. “Where’s Bucky?” 

“He went to your apartment,” Mack said. “He wanted to use the gym.”

Of course Tony gave Steve’s apartment its own gym. Doubtless the machines were specially calibrated for supersoldiers. 

Steve heard the gym before he saw it. Taylor Swift blasted through the sound system, loud enough that Steve’s eardrums trembled with the sound. It hit him like a physical wave as he opened the door to enter the gym. _I don’t know what I want; so don’t ask me!_ she sang, a thin layer of asperity over the anxiety in her voice; and Steve understood, suddenly, why Bucky liked Taylor Swift so much. All that emotion, all the emotions that Bucky had so much trouble expressing. Of course his favorite singer was the girl who belted _So how can I ever try to be better? Nobody ever lets me in._

The door from Steve’s apartment opened onto a staircase landing overlooking the workout space. Below, Bucky slammed his fist into the punching bag, then nailed it with a dramatic spinning kick. He had stripped off his jacket, every movement of his back muscles visible through the thin fabric of the long-sleeved t-shirt that stuck to his sweaty spine. His hair was falling out of its messy ponytail, hanging in his red face; and Steve felt a wave of lust so intense that he grasped the cold metal stair rail to calm himself down. 

_That is a terrible idea and you will regret it,_ he told himself. He felt as if someone had replaced his knees with Jell-O; his legs seemed to tremble as he walked down the staircase, and he was half-surprised he didn’t fall when he released the stair rail to cross the gym floor to Bucky. A new song began. The beat of “Shake It Off” pounded through Steve’s body.

He could smell Bucky’s sweat now, and it made him feel dizzy, overloaded: the scent of sweat, the pounding music, the sight of Bucky all worked up. Bucky gave the punching bag another roundhouse kick. 

Steve moved to stand in Bucky’s line of sight, well behind the punching bag. “You want me to hold the bag for you?” Steve called. 

Bucky blinked at him, surprised to see Steve there. Then he blinked at the bag, and then down at his hands, and Steve and Bucky both noticed at the same time that his sloppy taping had slipped. He had busted one of his knuckles. 

That was too much for Steve. He crossed the distance to Bucky, took Bucky’s hot hand in both of his, and kissed the broken skin. 

“JARVIS,” Bucky said. The music snapped off. Without the pounding beat to drown out his thoughts, Steve became aware, suddenly, of what he was doing, and he let Bucky’s hand drop away from his lips. 

But his eyes lifted to Bucky’s face instead, and that was a mistake. Bucky’s eyes were dilated, cheeks flushed and sweaty, hair tousled, lips parted as he panted; the adrenaline rush from the training turning into sexual arousal. “Steve,” he said, moving forward, still a few inches between them, but Steve could feel the heat radiating off Bucky’s body, taste the tang of his sweat, and he lifted a hand to cup Bucky’s hot cheek, hold him in place for a kiss. 

Bucky flinched, badly, as he always flinched from things that got close to his face. He stumbled away a few steps, and put his arm around the punching bag, and peered at Steve around it, like a shy child peering at a stranger around his mother’s legs. 

It was adorable and not at all erotic, and Steve laughed, a little hurt, mostly relieved. “I love you, Buck,” he said; and Bucky let go of the punching bag and retreated to a bench against the far wall, where he grabbed his water bottle and chugged half its contents. 

By the time Steve caught up with him, Bucky had his head tilted back against the wall, eyes closed, eyelashes dark against his cheeks. Sweat glistened in the hollow of his throat. Steve was struck by the inappropriate desire to lick him. 

Steve sprawled down next to him on the bench. He felt worn out, almost as tired as if they _had_ fucked. The urge to lick died away. He rested his cheek against Bucky’s shoulder. 

He was pleased when Bucky didn’t pull away, and surprised almost to the point of tears when Bucky gingerly put an arm around his shoulder. “Where’ve you been?” Bucky asked. 

Steve sniffed and straightened up, feeling guilty. He should have been here for Bucky, going through Skye’s emails, not drowning his sorrows in chamomile. “Drinking tea with Natasha and Pepper. Natasha wanted to head out to find more T.A.H.I.T.I. victims right this very minute. I guess she figured, we already talked to Rumlow, so…”

“Shi-it,” Bucky said, drawing the word out. “How’d that go?”

“Badly,” Steve said, and he told Bucky about it: Bobbi’s explanation, Rumlow’s disbelief. He left out the part at the end when Rumlow began to cry. He didn’t think Rumlow, any version of Rumlow, would want people to hear about that. 

He had made Brock Rumlow cry. Jesus. “Do you think we did the right thing?” Steve asked. “Maybe we should have worked him up to it so it would be easier for him to believe. Tried to soften the blow a little.” 

“You were never gonna make that blow soft, Steve,” Bucky said. He was mouthing at the cap of his water bottle. “Of course he doesn’t want to believe you. Everything he thinks he knows is a lie, and everyone he thought loved him was lying to him? His whole world’s falling apart. That was always gonna hurt like a son of a bitch.” 

“Not everyone,” said Steve. Bucky started to speak, skeptical, and Steve explained, “He has a dog. Lucy.” 

“He has a dog?” Bucky was envious. “You should get a dog, Steve.” 

“How about _you_ get a dog, Bucky.” 

“The Bus doesn’t have enough space – ” Bucky stopped, suddenly confused. “Well,” he said. “I guess that doesn’t matter anymore.” He twisted at the cap of his water bottle, then set it aside, and put his hands in his lap, leather-gloved left hand over the right. “You know what’s gonna happen to the Bus?”

“I have no idea.” 

Bucky’s right fingers twitched. He clamped the left hand over them. “Skye’s cats are still on there.”

“I think they’ll be all right for the night,” Steve said. “They still have that automated water dish, right? Automated litter box, automated food bowl?” Steve was pretty sure you could buy most of that at pet stores, but Fitz had built the Bus versions. He had shown them to Steve last time Steve was on the Bus, so pleased with his own handiwork that he couldn’t speak. 

“What’ll happen to them?” 

“I guess they’ll go with Skye.”

Bucky picked at the tape on his hand. “Do you think Skye will go to prison?” he asked quietly.

“I don’t know.” If any of them did, Skye would probably be among them. _daisychain88_. 

Bucky continued picking at the tape. “You know how Skye first ended up with SHIELD?” he burst out. “They kidnapped her and wouldn’t let her talk to her Rising Tide friends for months. Till she stopped wanting to talk to them, I guess.”

“That’s terrible.” Steve felt ill. He did not want to sympathize with Skye just then. 

“She thinks it’s sweet now. She and Simmons were having a good laugh about it over biscotti one day, that’s how I found out. She kept moving around her whole childhood, never had anyone to depend on, so when SHIELD wanted her – no one else had ever wanted her – ”

“I mean it, Buck. That’s terrible.”

Bucky traced the edge of a pocket on his cargo pants. “I should have protected her,” he said, and glanced up at Steve, and Steve saw with surprise that there were tears in his eyes. “I should have – I don’t know.” He glanced at Steve again. “She believed in SHIELD. And I didn’t want to interfere. She’d get disillusioned by life, I figured, and until then she would be happier believing.” He stopped, swallowing, and continued, soft-voiced. “And now look what she’s done. I’m so fucking mad at her.” 

He didn’t sound angry. He rubbed the tears out of his eyes with the back of his hand. “I don’t even _like_ Rumlow,” he muttered. “He sucks. He used to hide plastic spiders in Rollins’ MREs after he found out Rollins was an arachnophobe.” 

“Sounds like him.” The STRIKE team put plushie spiders in Rollins’ locker, too. Steve had been envious, actually; had wished the STRIKE team had an in-joke to tease him about. If they had started buying him little model Valkyries, he would have happily displayed the planes around his apartment as a sign that someone liked him enough to give him a gift. 

He hadn’t realized how mean-spirited the spiders actually were till Rumlow rigged one of Rollins’ MREs with a spider that popped out like a jack-in-the-box. “Even awful people have basic human rights, though,” Steve said. “I’ve hated him for years, ever since he turned out to be Hydra, and I hate that I have to feel so fucking bad for him now, but – Jesus. I feel so fucking bad for him. Buck, you should see him.” 

“I don’t wanna,” Bucky muttered. But then he seemed to stop and think about it. He asked, “Did he recognize you? When he met you?”

“Well, no, Buck. He’d been mind-wiped.” 

“No, I mean – obviously he didn’t know your name. But were you familiar to him? Emotionally.”

Steve thought about it. The meeting felt impossibly distant, as if it had taken place weeks ago, rather than just that afternoon. “I’m not sure,” he said at last. “He asked if maybe I were his senior officer in the military, and he apologized because he thought he might have been an asshole to me.” The apology seemed to hit him again as he remembered it: God, he’d wanted an apology from Rumlow. But getting it in these circumstances… “But those could have been educated guesses.” 

Bucky nodded, thoughtful. He started unwinding the tape around his hand. “If he did recognize me,” he said, “I don’t think it would be good for him now. He hated me. Or I thought he hated me. I think really he was afraid of me. It’d make him feel unsafe – more unsafe – if he saw me now.” A half-smile. “He was at Odessa, see.” 

It took Steve a moment to remember what Odessa meant. “Where you beat up all those agents,” Steve said. 

Bucky nodded. He ripped the tape off his hand and tossed it aside, and leaned back against the wall. 

“Why’d you do it, Buck?” Steve asked. 

A little shrug. “’Cause I was supposed to shoot Natasha too. But I didn’t – I got confused – and they were making fun of me for it afterward. You know. _You’re supposed to be such a hotshot and you got outsmarted by a girl_. And Pierce had told me – he always made up some story about how important the mission was. That time, he said the scientist was creating this virulent plague to unleash on the earth, and I got upset thinking about – I’d let his assistant go – what if she unleashed it now? For vengeance? 

“And of course the team thought I was fucking nuts when I tried to explain what I was worried about. They wouldn’t let me go back out to finish it. So – ” Bucky rolled his eyes in self-mockery. “I told you all this before.”

“You left out the part where you thought you were preventing a plague.”

“That’s the part that makes me sound stupid.”

“That’s the part that makes you sound not like a psychopath,” Steve said. 

Bucky sighed. He levered himself away from the wall, sitting up straight for just a moment before flopping forward. “Do you think they’ll all end up in prison again?” Bucky asked. “After their trials.” 

“I don’t know. Maybe they’ll get off with time served, given their suffering – the mind-wipes and, you know, I’m sure illegal imprisonment by SHIELD was no picnic.” He rubbed his face, remembering the bare cell Bucky had stayed in during his interrogation. “And the findings at the trial would be used to start a trial against SHIELD, if the Congressional hearings haven’t done that already. But we don’t live in an ideal world…”

He stopped again, very tired. A trial for SHIELD would be a good outcome, he knew, really the best outcome. But he also knew he would play a part in it, maybe a prominent part, maybe end up going to jail; and maybe he deserved it, but he dreaded it. 

At least he might be able to keep Bucky out of it. It was the least he could do after he’d dragged Bucky into SHIELD in the first place; and he remembered, and couldn’t believe it had slipped his mind, that Coulson had used sleep deprivation on Bucky during his debriefing; had cracked Bucky, and hidden it from Steve. 

What a day it had been. Discovering that had been the _least_ horrifying thing that happened. 

“I’m sorry I got you involved in all this,” Steve said, voice cracking. “I’m sorry I rejoined SHIELD and – ”

Bucky groaned. “Not _this_ again.”

“ – turned you over to Coulson,” Steve finished, and frowned at Bucky. “You make it sound like I’ve been pestering you with apologies for months.” 

“Well, you’re gonna if I don’t put a stop to it right now,” Bucky said. “Sometimes all the options are shit, Steve. Don’t beat yourself up for picking the least shitty. What else were you gonna do? Turn me over to Tony Stark and hope he wasn’t feeling vengeful? Keep me in the Tower so JARVIS could watch me all the time?”

Steve was silent. He hadn’t told Tony that Bucky had killed Howard and Maria Stark until after Bucky was safe ( _safe_ , Steve though bitterly) in SHIELD custody. Tony had gotten over it more quickly than Steve expected; but his first explosive reaction had made Steve glad he didn’t tell him while Bucky was still on the run, where Tony could have caught up with him and hurt him. 

“Or take me into your apartment with no support from anyone and hope to God I wouldn’t kill you while you slept?” Bucky demanded. 

“You weren’t going to kill me while I slept.”

“Yeah, but you had no way to know that. It could’ve all been a ruse to get close enough to finish my last mission. Or, or – what else could you have done? You could have turned me over to the US government, maybe. They’re so nice and humane to terrorist operatives.” 

“You weren’t – ”

“I was too, Steve, and I doubt the US government is equipped to deal with – ” His jaw clenched; he spit out the next words, “ – brainwashing cases. What was I gonna say? ‘I didn’t realize it at the time, but I guess I was kind of serving under duress’? _Jesus_ , Steve,” said Bucky, his voice suddenly vehement. “It wasn’t like they made me into some kind of empty-headed wind-up doll.” 

“I know they didn’t,” Steve said. “Wind-up dolls don’t beat up their away teams in Odessa.”

Bucky slouched back against the wall. “I believed in all those missions,” he said. “I thought we were saving the world.” 

“Because Pierce told you that,” Steve said. 

“Yes, but – ” He stopped. “I can’t, I shouldn’t tell you this.”

“Why not?”

Bucky covered his mouth with his hand, shaking his head.

“Talk to me, Buck,” Steve said. 

But Bucky shook his head, looking at Steve over his hand with pleading eyes. “I can’t, I can’t.”

“You can,” Steve said.

“I _shouldn’t_.”

“Why not?” Steve asked, and put a hand on Bucky’s shoulder. 

Bucky jerked away from his hand, and got up, and paced the length of the gym; came back, and stopped in front of Steve, and blurted, “See, I figured it out.”

Steve’s heart stopped. “About the mind-wiping?”

“No. No. I – in 1988. We were on a mission to Poland, only they couldn’t make up their minds whether I should kill the leaders of Solidarity or not, so we spent a few weeks just knocking around Warsaw. Andrushka hated going outside in countries where he didn’t speak the language, so I’d bring him back food in the evenings, dumplings usually, because he hated them – well, I was still mad at him. About Zola.” He laughed, bright and brittle. “He let Zola operate on me one time without anesthesia, did you know? Andrushka did. He never could say no to anyone. That’s why I wanted him for a handler, I figured I could lead him by the nose; I didn’t think about how it meant that so could everyone else – ”

Steve stood, raising a hand to touch Bucky’s shoulder. Bucky jerked away from Steve.

“And I ran into some British tourists,” Bucky said, talking fast, almost laughing. “They kept calling me Yank, the accent, you know, and one of them lent me this book he was reading. John Steinbeck’s _The Moon Is Down_ , you remember reading that? And we were sitting there on the lip of the fountain in Saxon Garden, this was July, it was _so_ hot. And I was flipping through it and – just reading bits of it, absentmindedly reading them, I didn’t have to focus – and I knew I’d read it before, and then it hit me. Not everything, not my name or anything. But that I had been an American, and I just wanted to get away – ”

“Bucky,” Steve said. 

Bucky flinched, hands rising. “No, no, you don’t understand. I wanted to get away from – like I could walk away, and the realization would fall off my shoulders. So I went back to the apartment and – Andrushka was collapsed on the couch, and I knelt down beside him and shook his shoulder, and told him I wanted to go home. _Domoy_ , you know.” His head lowered. He blinked rapidly. “To the dacha.”

Steve took advantage of that stillness to hug him. 

Bucky made no move to hug Steve back. “That’s how I know why Rumlow doesn’t believe you,” Bucky said, and gave an odd meaningless laugh. “Do you hate me now?”

“No. Never. I love you, Buck.” 

The shaking intensified. Bucky jerked away from Steve and sat again on the bench, curved in on himself, his hand over his face. Steve sat next to him gingerly, listening to his rough breathing. Bucky was trying to pull himself together, trying not to cry. 

“And I know – ” Bucky’s voice trembled. “The obvious question would have been, how the hell does an American end up becoming a Soviet superassassin? But it never even occurred to me. Grisha told me I lost my memories in an accident and it never occurred to me that he might… It wasn’t till after I’d been with you for two years, more than two years, it wasn’t till last spring I realized, that I let myself realize he must have – ” Bucky made an odd choking noise in his throat.

_Lied_. “Bucky,” Steve said again. 

Bucky dropped his hand from his face, wrapped his arms around himself. “I didn’t even recognize him when he came back from the gulag,” he said. “He looked so old. Well, he wasn’t young anymore; he had fought in the Revolution. But he looked like an old, old man, a hundred years old, missing most of his teeth. Beria kicked them out in his interrogation. He’d spent ten years in prison camp on the Kolyma. Fourteen-hour days in the mines for bread like clay and soup that was hot water with maybe some fish bones. He lost half his toes in a penalty isolator because one of the bosses thought he looked like he _might_ talk back – ”

Bucky lifted his right hand against his forehead. Steve could see his fingers trembling. 

“And it was going to make up for that too,” Bucky said. “When Communism came. Everything was going to be paradise, when Communism came, and that would make up for everything.” He slammed his hand against the bench. “But it never came, it was all for nothing. He suffered for nothing, they died for nothing, it was all for _nothing_.” 

“Bucky,” said Steve, and caught his hand before he could hurt himself. Bucky looked at him in surprise, as if he’d forgotten Steve was there. 

“It’s my fault he went to the gulag,” Bucky blurted. 

“Why do you say that?” Steve asked. 

Bucky’s throat worked. He opened his mouth, and closed it, and pulled his hand from Steve’s. “Stalin sent us to kill Tito. In 1946. The leader of Yugoslavia. Me and my team, the people I had trained with in the Ukraine, putting down the Banderists after the war.” He brushed his hair back from his face, but it fell back over his cheeks as soon as he took his hand away. “And Stalin heard us, about the Winter Soldier program. He invited us to Kuntsevo to dinner – me and Grisha, not the whole team. And it was…” 

Bucky was silent a long time. “What was Kuntsevo?” Steve prompted.

“Stalin’s dacha. It’s still there, you know, just like he had it then. I visited after the Triskelion. Only it’s quiet now; no midnight banquets anymore.” Bucky’s hands moved restlessly. “He had poached quail, and bowls of caviar, and three kinds of soup on the sideboard. Like the Russian fairytale about the magic tablecloth that fills up with food every time you unfold it. He gave Grisha and me blinchiki with sour cream and caviar. He put them together with his own hands.”

He stopped again, his eyes large and glittering. “They were all there, all the Politburo. It was like – if you were invited to a dinner with all the stars in Hollywood, Rita Hayworth and Errol Flynn and Jimmy Stewart and just everyone. Except if they’d actually _done_ all those dashing things they did in their movies, if they really were that courageous and clever and – of course I know better now – but at the time it was like that. And they wanted to hear all about our program. The New Soviet Man.

“Or Stalin wanted to hear about it. The rest of the Politburo were drunk like pigs.” Bucky’s face clenched up. “Beria – he was the leader of the organs, you know, the secret police – he was teasing one of the others, and Stalin got fed up with it. He asked me to shoot a glass of vodka off Beria’s head to teach him a lesson. In the moonlight, one hundred paces. Dead impressed when I managed it. Beria was furious, of course.” 

He fell silent. “You wanted to make Stalin happy,” Steve said. 

Bucky gave a sharp nod. “And he’d been talking all evening about all the problems Tito was causing. So I offered to take care of Tito. My team could take care of Tito, I said. Bragging. You know how I get.” A glance at Steve. “We all loved Stalin. When we were reunited, the whole team all wanted to shake my hand, because I had shaken hands with him. Him with an uppercase H, like he was God. Agnessa kissed my cheek, because I’d asked Stalin to send a kiss for her. His mustache scratched.” His hand rose to his cheek, his mouth. “And then…” 

He was on his feet, pacing again. “I can’t talk about this,” he said. His voice seemed oddly compressed. “I’ve never been able to talk about this. Which is so – so funny, because that’s how Grisha got me through it. Afterward. We stopped in the woods. I thought Grisha was going to shoot me, and I was glad – that I would die in the open air, like Agnessa, like that gave us something in common. But he just wanted to talk where the driver couldn’t hear. If you talk under the stars, only God is listening. He told me – when Communism came, they would be honored for their sacrifice; but that could only happen if there was someone to tell the story, and that would have to be me. He wouldn’t live to see it, but I would. And Communism never came, and no one cares, but it doesn’t matter, because I can’t tell the story anyway – ”

His voice was rising toward hysteria. Steve caught his hand. “Bucky,” he said. “Talk to me. Please. I care.” 

Bucky jerked his hand away. But he stopped pacing. “Agnessa – ” he began. He cleared his throat, rubbed his eyes, and then sat down hard on the far end of the bench, too far away for Steve to touch. “Machine gun fire ripped Agnessa in half, on the hillside,” he said, and had to stop talking, because he was crying. Steve imagined, in a flash, Peggy going down under machine gun fire, on a Howling Commandos raid, and he couldn’t breathe. 

Bucky got himself under control again. “And we’d already lost half the team,” he said. “And my metal arm, the first one, got blasted to bits. And Tito wasn’t even in the country, Steve, it was hopeless, it was impossible, I had to call off the mission.” 

“Of course you had to,” Steve said. He gripped the edge of the bench. His fingers hurt, he was holding so tightly. “You did the right thing, Bucky. No one should die on an impossible mission.”

Bucky didn’t speak for a while. His mouth hung open. Steve could hear him breathing. “If something went wrong,” Bucky said. His voice was brittle. “It was never a mistake under Stalin. There were no accidents. Someone wrecked it on purpose.” His eyes had gone big and glassy. “I was the saboteur. But I was the only Winter Soldier they had, so it was the rest of the team that got shot. Except Grisha. He got lucky. Just a quarter in the gulag.” 

“Shit, Bucky,” Steve said. Nothing else seemed adequate. “Shit, that’s awful.” 

“He got released during Khrushchev’s Thaw, in ‘56. When I got defrosted. I’d been frozen till Stalin died. And I felt like – I don’t know. Grisha was the last thing tying me to earth. People. Feelings. And when he was gone that last rope would be cut and I would just shoot up into the sky like a balloon – ” 

Steve found it curiously apt: Bucky floating far above other people, and Steve running below trying to grab a dragging guy line and pull him back to earth. 

“And I wanted to float away like that. Like I would never care about anyone else, so nothing would ever hurt me again after that. But I never wanted him to go. He died in ’65…” His eyes filled with tears. He rubbed them roughly away. 

“And you woke up, and all of a sudden he was dead,” Steve said. His throat ached. He knew how that felt. 

“Jesus,” Bucky muttered. He scrubbed at his face with his knuckles. “It was fucking decades ago. I dunno why I laid all that on you.” 

“No, Buck, don’t,” Steve said. “Jesus. Who cares how long ago it really was? It doesn’t feel that long ago. It still hurts.”

Bucky glanced over at him, a small quivery smile at his lips. But it fell away into a frown of puzzlement. “You’re crying,” he said. 

Steve hadn’t realized he was crying. He touched his own face, surprised, and became aware of his stinging hot eyes. “It’s sad,” Steve said. “Jesus, Bucky, your friends getting shot like that, it’s so fucking sad.” 

Bucky shot across the space between them and hugged Steve so hard he knocked Steve off the bench. They ended up on the hard floor, Bucky’s face pressed Steve’s shoulder. “I know maybe I should have told you earlier…”

“I wouldn’t have understood,” Steve said. And he thought with shame of his insistence, last Christmas, that Grisha couldn’t have liked Bucky. As if Bucky’s feelings for his Russian friends couldn’t possibly count. _You just want to spoil it_ , Bucky had said. “A story like that, you can’t tell it to someone who won’t understand.”

Bucky nodded. Steve let himself collapse on the floor, lying down, Bucky’s torso overlapping his, and Bucky’s face pillowed against Steve’s chest. He worked his hand through Bucky’s hair, and he wanted to say a lot more, to apologize, or sympathize, to say anything. His throat choked up. He couldn’t seem to speak. He held Bucky tight instead, rubbing his hand over Bucky’s back. 

“Don’t,” Bucky blurted, and Steve stopped. “Don’t, don’t – just hold me?”

So Steve tightened his arms around Bucky and just held him, and Bucky cried against Steve’s chest. 

After a while, Steve became aware that Bucky had fallen asleep. Steve thought about waking him up, taking him back upstairs to their apartment. The floor wasn’t exactly comfortable. 

But if he woke Bucky up, Bucky might not let Steve hold him anymore; would probably turn prickly and quiet and go off alone, and leave Steve alone too. So Steve relaxed instead, soaked up Bucky’s warmth, and cried a little himself, although he wasn’t sure why. 

He didn’t expect to sleep. But he ran out of tears, and closed his eyes, and he was asleep almost at once.

***

It was the feeling of cold where warmth had been, of sudden lightness, that woke Steve up: Bucky moving away from him. 

Steve’s eyes seemed to be stuck shut. He unstuck them and sat up, trying not to moan. He could only have slept for a few hours; through the windows high in the gym walls he could see dawn, rose-pink. _The rosy fingers of dawn_ , he thought, muzzy-headed, hearing Miss Kellerman’s voice again as he thought it. His high school English teacher. She read the Odyssey with them. 

His mouth felt like someone had stuffed it with cotton, and when he sat up, his body hurt from lying on the hard floor.

Bucky straddled a padded weight-lifting bench, arms above his head, leaning from side to side: stretching himself out. “You should’ve woken me up,” he said, not looking at Steve. “You didn’t need to…” He gestured at the hard floor. 

“Maybe I didn’t want you to go away and leave me all alone,” Steve told Bucky. “You ever think of that, punk? How was I gonna sleep on my own, staring at the ceiling and thinking about the T.A.H.I.T.I. project?”

Bucky dropped his arms and smiled. His hair was all tangled and clumpy, his face shiny with oil and sweat; and he looked beautiful to Steve. He would have liked to just sit there and smile up at Bucky all morning. 

He gave himself a few moments to savor it. Then he moved to straddle the weight-lifting bench, facing Bucky, their knees almost touching. “You want to drive up to Rumlow’s place with me later today? Get some of his things? Stop for some pie along the way.” Get away from Stark Tower and relax for a few hours. 

Bucky touched Steve’s hair, butterfly-light, and just as quickly he moved away. “Yeah,” he said.

“I’ve just got a couple things to take care of first,” Steve said. 

Steve took his time. He showered and made himself a cup of coffee, and dipped a handful of biscotti in the coffee as he drank it. Simmons must have been stress-baking; half a dozen trays of biscotti lay around Natasha’s kitchen. He ate some toast, and a banana, and a grapefruit, and decided that if he procrastinated any longer he might eat everything in Natasha’s kitchen and leave Simmons and Fitz and Mack hungry when they woke up. “JARVIS,” Steve asked. “Is there a checkers set I can use?” 

Steve didn’t know how Rumlow felt about checkers. Rumlow always used to bring a pack of cards with him on missions. But Steve didn’t know how well Rumlow’s scarred hands could handle cards, and he didn’t want to frustrate Rumlow with a game that he might find hard to play. 

Rumlow’s door was open when Steve arrived, so Steve knocked on the doorframe. Rumlow, lying on his bed, turned his head very slightly to see who it was; but when he saw it was Steve, he let his head fall again. Lucy, lying on the bed next to him, wagged her tail uncertainly. The room was so quiet that Steve could hear the sound of the cars many stories below. 

“I brought checkers,” Steve said, lifting the box so Rumlow could see. Rumlow wasn’t looking at him, in a way that suggested he was refusing to look rather than simply not interested. “I thought we could play a game.”

No reply. Steve removed a tray from the bedside table. The plate was empty, but it looked like it had been licked clean, and Steve suspected Rumlow had fed his breakfast to Lucy. 

Steve set out the checkers game in its place: black on his side, red on Rumlow’s. “I’ll leave if you want me to,” he told Rumlow. “But if you don’t say go, I’m staying.” 

Rumlow made no response. Steve moved a chair from the corner and positioned it by the checkerboard. He sat down and moved one of his checkers. 

They sat in silence for a while. Steve glanced out the window. Rumlow’s window faced west, and his room was still dusky. 

“You know JARVIS will turn on the lights if you ask him,” Steve said. “He’s the computer program in the walls. He plays music, too.” He paused, thinking. “I could maybe get a tennis ball for Lucy if you wanted.”

Lucy wagged her tail at the mention of her name. Rumlow shifted for the first time, still not looking at Steve, but Steve had the impression he was at least no longer trying not to listen. 

“I wish I could offer you a Frisbee, but I think it would be hard to throw in the halls,” Steve said. “And I don’t think Tony would want to risk it flying off the roof and falling on someone below. Has anyone told you that you’ll have yard time on the roof? Pepper has a garden up there. It’s not just bare concrete. I don’t know how long you’ll be here – Tony is looking into getting you a trial, but I’m not sure how long that takes – but as long as you’re here, we’re going to try to make you comfortable. As comfortable as you can be while you’re locked up.”

He paused again, feeling somehow foolish. Lucy nosed at Rumlow’s hand, whining softly. Rumlow reflexively stroked her ears.

“Rumlow,” Steve said. “I want to apologize to you. You’ve been through a ton of shit, and if I had been more on top of things, I might have been able to prevent some of it.” He stopped, thinking. “If I could go back and redo things, I would, but I can’t. And I know I can’t begin to make up for everything you’ve suffered. But I can try to make things better for you going forward, and I know that’s hopelessly inadequate, but that’s – well, that’s the best I can do.” 

Steve looked up. Sometime during this speech, Rumlow had lifted his eyes. He was looking at Steve. But when Steve tried to meet his gaze, Rumlow’s eyes dropped to the checkerboard. He moved one of his checkers. 

“Your move,” Rumlow said.


End file.
